Memory and perception

I recently read an interesting article about false memories. It seems that most people, if confronted with a made-up photo DO recall the event which would have been depicted in it. In the experiment, the event was a hot air balloon trip and I am surprised by how little we are sure about –if we can end up being persuaded we have actually lived such an extraordinary experience although we did not. This has important consequences on juridical matters, showing that it is useless (and may lead to distorsions), to urge witness to remember or to rember more clearly what they might have unconsciously seen. Vedānta Deśika makes a similar point in his Seśvaramīmāṃsā on 1.1.4:

[Obj.:] What about the fact that the very topmost level of visualisation (bhāvanā) makes [things] perceptible? [S:] This is not true. Out of visualisation it is not perception which arises, but rather only clearness of memory. In fact, the accumulation of mnestic traces (saṃskāra) supplies sharpness to memory. Even when, for instance, a love-sick meets his beloved one, nothing exceeding what has already been known appears. And the exceeding element appearing in “And on every tree I see a cloth (ambara) consisting in the skin of an antelope (kṛṣṇājina) and a garment (cīra), similar to Rāma with his arch, holding a noose in hand, the destroyer” and similar [verses], this is not directly perceivable, since it appears in a different way. What [is directly perceivable] is, instead, its external look.